So you're saying that because they're not economists by trade, that politicians shouldn't concern themselves with informing themselves about economic issues?

It's not that she expressed a Keynesian view, it's that she wasn't able to express any view. Also, far be it for me to comment even superficially on an economic matter as a non-economist, but wouldn't an auto industry bailout be significantly less complex than the overall banking/financial/mortgage industry bailout?

Eta - this is friggin priceless. She wishes she had been given more opportunity to speak to the media during the campaign. The liberal gotcha media that filtered your words, Sarah? What a phony dolt.

What I'm saying is that no politicians I've seen really know what to do. Even Gingrich who was the biggest detractor of the bailout signed on to it eventually from political peer pressure. If we want politicians to be knowledgeable about economics they will still have to deal with popularity. It's not popular right now to let companies shut down that make crappy products because there will be some unemployment until the economy recovers (meaning companies structure their labor and raw material resources to start making products and services people want again).

Most politicians do what is popular and what won't get them criticized in the short-term, usually a superficial fiscal stimulus (create money). Bush and Obama are following the Keynesian model. At least she is skeptical about the bailout. The democrats & moderate Republicans are just going over the cliff with it and adding companies to the list that the taxpayer will pay for even if Ford and GM make crappy cars. I don't see Toyota lining up. At least she is talking about fiscal responsibility of individuals. I know it should be common sense but many economists think it's all demand side economics and dislike the population saving their money.

If you want to see the current debate about the recession see the articles below between Keynesian Nobel Prize winner and an Austrian economist point of view:

If the experts are still debating it you can bet politicians will be even more confused. There's an element of "let's see what happens and then form an opinion" air about the economic climate right now. Even the auto industry is not that easy to get because many blame the unions for collecting massive early retirement benefits that could have gone to R & D to make more fuel efficient cars to compete with Toyota. Throwing money there and have that go into a money pit of more early retirement benefits won't solve the problem either.

I'm sure there are other candidates that could speak better than Palin and Republicans will have to look at that for their primaries, because all this talk about Reagan really is about communication skills. The right ideas have to be communicated properly and they need to deal with a hostile media that are looking for gotcha moments. Palin hasn't mastered it and we won't know who will be the real leader until all the candidates step forward years from now. After the bailout goes through a couple of years politicians will start using their 20/20 hindsight and start taking sides on the subject.

If someone asked Obama about the bailout he would be clear and say "yes we should bail out car companies." If this is wrong he would be clearly wrong but at least he's clear. Palin is trying to say "well yes but no" because she inherently feels "no" but the political pressure is "yes or there will be a GREAT DEPRESSION YOU GOOF." I don't like fence-sitting either but diving into a money pit and shoveling money to bad products people don't want is a huge political risk if you're wrong.

The Wild Wordsmith of WasillaBy Dick Cavett
Electronic devices dislike me. There is never a day when something isn’t ailing. Three out of these five implements — answering machine, fax machine, printer, phone and electric can-opener — all dropped dead on me in the past few days.

Now something has gone wrong with all three television sets. They will only get Sarah Palin.

I can play a kind of Alaskan roulette. Any random channel clicked on by the remote brings up that eager face, with its continuing assaults on the English Lang.

There she is with Larry and Matt and just about everyone else but Dr. Phil (so far). If she is not yet on “Judge Judy,” I suspect it can’t be for lack of trying.

What have we done to deserve this, this media blitz that the astute Andrea Mitchell has labeled “The Victory Tour”?

I suppose it will be recorded as among political history’s ironies that Palin was brought in to help John McCain. I can’t blame feminists who might draw amusement from the fact that a woman managed to both cripple the male she was supposed to help while gleaning an almost Elvis-sized following for herself. Mac loses, Sarah wins big-time was the gist of headlines.

I feel a little sorry for John. He aimed low and missed.

What will ambitious politicos learn from this? That frayed syntax, bungled grammar and run-on sentences that ramble on long after thought has given out completely are a candidate’s valuable traits?

And how much more of all that lies in our future if God points her to those open-a-crack doors she refers to? The ones she resolves to splinter and bulldoze her way through upon glimpsing the opportunities, revealed from on high.

What on earth are our underpaid teachers, laboring in the vineyards of education, supposed to tell students about the following sentence, committed by the serial syntax-killer from Wasilla High and gleaned by my colleague Maureen Dowd for preservation for those who ask, “How was it she talked?”

My concern has been the atrocities there in Darfur and the relevance to me with that issue as we spoke about Africa and some of the countries there that were kind of the people succumbing to the dictators and the corruption of some collapsed governments on the continent, the relevance was Alaska’s investment in Darfur with some of our permanent fund dollars.

And, she concluded, “never, ever did I talk about, well, gee, is it a country or a continent, I just don’t know about this issue.”

It’s admittedly a rare gift to produce a paragraph in which whole clumps of words could be removed without noticeably affecting the sense, if any.

(A cynic might wonder if Wasilla High School’s English and geography departments are draped in black.)

(How many contradictory and lying answers about The Empress’s New Clothes have you collected? I’ve got, so far, only four. Your additional ones welcome.)

Matt Lauer asked her about her daughter’s pregnancy and what went into the decision about how to handle it. Her “answer” did not contain the words “daughter,” “pregnancy,” “what to do about it” or, in fact, any two consecutive words related to Lauer’s query.

I saw this as a brief clip, so I don’t know whether Lauer recovered sufficiently to follow up, or could only sit there, covered in disbelief. If it happens again, Matt, I bequeath you what I heard myself say once to an elusive guest who stiffed me that way: “Were you able to hear any part of my question?”

At the risk of offending, well, you, for example, I worry about just what it is her hollering fans see in her that makes her the ideal choice to deal with the world’s problems: collapsed economies, global warming, hostile enemies and our current and far-flung twin battlefronts, either of which may prove to be the world’s second “30 Years’ War.”

Has there been a poll to see if the Sarah-ites are numbered among that baffling 26 percent of our population who, despite everything, still maintain that President George has done a heckuva job?

A woman in one of Palin’s crowds praised her for being “a mom like me … who thinks the way I do” and added, for ill measure, “That’s what I want in the White House.” Fine, but in what capacity?

Do this lady’s like-minded folk wonder how, say, Jefferson, Lincoln, the Roosevelts, et al (add your own favorites) managed so well without being soccer moms? Without being whizzes in the kitchen, whipping up moose soufflés? Without executing and wounding wolves from the air and without promoting that sad, threadbare hoax — sexual abstinence — as the answer to the sizzling loins of the young?

(In passing, has anyone observed that hunting animals with high-powered guns could only be defined as sport if both sides were equally armed?)

I’d love to hear what you think has caused such an alarming number of our fellow Americans to fall into the Sarah Swoon.

Could the willingness to crown one who seems to have no first language have anything to do with the oft-lamented fact that we seem to be alone among nations in having made the word “intellectual” an insult? (And yet…and yet…we did elect Obama. Surely not despite his brains.)

Sorry about all of the foregoing, as if you didn’t get enough of the lady every day in every medium but smoke signals.

I do not wish her ill. But I also don’t wish us ill. I hope she continues to find happiness in Alaska.

May I confess that upon first seeing her, I liked her looks? With the sound off, she presents a not uncomely frontal appearance.